


we are what we are

by iskra (kiira)



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: !!!!! carmilla ?? stuff ???, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4166835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiira/pseuds/iskra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your loyalty blossomed out of love, out of a love more and greater than you had ever loved yourself. </p><p>Matska was something different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are what we are

**Author's Note:**

> i havent written carmilla stuff in AGES pls be kind

“My sparkling diamond,” Mother whispers into your curls, and Matska curls her lip at you and mouths, “ _Later_ ,” at you.

You’re still not sure what to think of her. Mother breathed you to life, forced your jaw apart and held you close until you stopped shaking, pressed a kiss to your cold, dead cheek; Matska laughed when you drank too fast, and sneered at the way you cut girls’ necks, all gasping breaths and spitting blood.

“At least you’re pretty,” and she drags a girl in by her hair and shoves her at you. “You’re not going to get any better without practice, kitten,” and you bend to kiss the crying girl’s neck.

You stopped apologizing after you lost count.

/

It’s easier to pass the endless hours with Mother, Mother who dresses you like you’re a china doll, and watches you kill and kill and kill with something hungry in her eyes. You get better at killing until it’s nearly mindless, a game, a nothing – they aren’t like you, you were never like them, you wear dead women’s jewels in your hair and their blood stains your teeth.

But Matska – Matska tosses her hair back and laughs at Mother’s demands, and disappears for months, years, decades at a time. Sometime you forget her (sometimes you envy her; feel Mother’s cool hand on your wrist and burn the envy of Matska’s freedom out of your skin).

It’s 1743 when she comes back for an entire year, and Mother takes you to Saint Petersburg, dresses you in midnight blue and Matska in a deep red.

(There are parties every night, and you spin in the dizzying, cloying warmth; girls press themselves to you and giggle in breathless Russian, Mother brushes curls away from your forehead and you take the prettiest girls back to your rooms).

It’s afternoon, midsummer and it’s  _hot_ , much too hot to do anything except drape yourself on a couch and let your latest toy press sticky kisses to your collarbone (or at least that’s what she says– you can’t feel the heat). Matska sweeps in and settles herself in a rustle of skirts and silk at the end of the couch.

“Get your  _pet_  out, kitten,” she singsongs in German, and you push Irina (or Magdalina or Galina) off your lap, blink lazily as you watch her stumble out (Mother wants her for something or for someone, you sleep with her tonight and deliver her tomorrow).

Matska sighs and looks at you under heavy lashes.

“Don’t you just  _hate_  the heat, darling one?”

You mumble an answer in Hungarian because you  _know_  Matska’s Hungarian isn’t as good as yours, know your accent is harsh and (left over from Before), and carefully fix the top of your dress so you look presentable, look a lady, look a lure.  

“Mother’s lucky she found you, you know,” she tries again, curling her bloody lips at your tangled hair, bruises on your neck, “the girls just seem to  _love_  you.”

“They don’t,” you say shortly, and there’s a ringing in your ears, because these are thoughts you cannot have.

She looks at you softly for a second (you thought you had lost all softness) and shrugs. “Fine,” and she fixes her gaze on the painting across the room.

“Come here, dearest one,” she says after the silence is overwhelming, after Irina Magdalina Galina has faded into the background, and she pulls you down by your shoulders until you’re laying on her lap, her fingers tangled in your hair.

“How old are you, Matska?” you whisper, and it’s not really a question that’s  _asked_  and you feel foolish, a child, but she just laughs.

“A good deal older than you, kitten,” and her fingernails dig into your scalp.

/

Your loyalty blossomed out of love, out of a love more and greater than you had ever loved yourself.

Matska was something different.

It seemed almost a duty, a requirement, a necessity – Mother pulled you from death and sometimes you wondered late at night what horror she rescued Matska from.

(You realize when you’re 185 that she killed you too).

/

It’s a century between Russia and when you see her again, and you fit yourself against Mother, become Mother’s most cherished daughter, darling thing.

“Mircalla, chérie,” she purrs, “There’s a girl I need,” and she doesn’t need to finish her sentence, because you know how it ends.

There’s a girls she needs, and you’ll pretend to fall ill, and the girl will slowly become your  _dearest companion_ , and you’ll sleep with her or with her brother or her maid or her father and then one morning you’ll lead her away, to your pretty, grinning mother.

And then the next evening you’ll do it again, faint at a ball or in the street or after a carriage accident. You’re pretty and fragile; no one sees the blood under your nails until it’s terribly too late.

But Matska comes mid-performance, and for an hour you don’t recognize it’s her (she’s just another spinning girl at a ball), but she brushes up behind you and mumbles, “You’ve grown, kitten,” and pulls you off by your wrist into the shadows.

“We’re going out tonight, little sister,” you look at Matska and wonder if anyone could ever think you were human.

It’s only with her when these strange, treasonous thoughts creep into your mind, only with her when you think about running and freedom and (stop Mircalla).

“Mother wants me here, Matska” you tell her, and she tips her head back and laughs.

“It’s  _Mattie_  now, darling and Mother will never know. As long as you’re in the mark’s house by sunrise, she won’t care, lovely. Which one is it, anyways?”

“Her,” and you point at a pretty redhead dancing with an older man. “She’s a ballerina,” and Matska rolls her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter, kitten,” and pushes you out a door.

(You kill a young man, lick his blood from your fingers and Matska watches delightedly; she kills the ballerina’s dance partner and Mother’s eyes grow cold).

/

(You see her three times After – she shoves Will at you and grins  _Your turn, darling_ ).

You do not smile back.

/

She stumbles across you in New York – she was a singer in that lifetime, you were a student again (physics this time), and you never ask her what she was doing in that alley that night.

Carefully, she helps you stand, takes you back to the empty apartment you pretend to live in and cracks your shoulders back into place.

“It’s hard, Carmilla,” she whispers, “It’s so terribly hard.”

She does not say another word.

/

“I wouldn’t have killed her,” she says abruptly, standing outside of Mother’s apartment. “Your little pet, I mean.”

“Yes. You would have,” and you’re tired, you’re so damn tired.

“You would have too, once upon a time,” and she turns away.

You do not say a thing.

**Author's Note:**

> come be my friend @ bettymcraae.tumblr.com


End file.
